Is the payoff worth it for the host teams?

In May at the NFL owners meetings in Dallas, groups from New
York, South Florida, Tampa and Arizona, in partnership with their respective
teams, will seek to win the right to host the 2014 Super Bowl. The teams will
put on a big show and spend significant time and money touting the bid.

What do the teams actually get out of being a host to the
Super Bowl? That’s the dirty secret: Not much.

“The victor doesn’t get any
spoils,” said Thad Sheely, the executive vice president of stadium development
and finance for the New York Jets, which together with the New York Giants are
striving to bring the Super Bowl to their new, shared stadium. New Meadowlands
Stadium is scheduled to open in April.

Mike Dee, chief executive
of the Miami Dolphins, which is the host team Sunday, said point blank, “There
is not a lot of economic benefit to the team. Very little in fact. The NFL
takes over the facility, and leases the facility. Most of that goes into the
community.”

The league takes control of host venues and
reaps all the revenue from the game.

The host teams do receive
about 3,000 tickets, more than the 700 other teams receive (other than the two
competing teams, which receive more). That helps with business partners such as
sponsors and suite holders.

But since the NFL controls the venue for the game, the money
goes to the league, not the team.

Even Frank Supovitz, the NFL vice president of events, who is
in charge of putting the specifications together for bidding cities, admitted
there are “questionable benefits. The team sponsors do not enjoy an association
with the Super Bowl per se.”

So why does a team go all
out to help host the game?

One is to be a good civic
partner, which could never hurt next time the team needs something from the
local government. The game by some estimates creates a half-billion-dollar
economic impact, though some sports academics charge that those figures are
wildly inflated. Nonetheless, cities seem to buy into those numbers, and covet
having the game.

The teams also get to showcase their buildings. The Jets, for
example, are using the potential of hosting the game to help sell remaining
seat licenses. “It’s about generating excitement around the new venue,” Sheely
said of the New York bid.

The game Sunday in South
Florida likely helped the Dolphins sell their naming-rights deal to Sun Life
several weeks ago. However, hosting the game has yet to win a naming-rights
deal for the Dallas Cowboys in their new home. The Cowboys host next year’s
game.

Hosting the game can
enhance a team’s reputation among suite holders and season-ticket holders. Some
suite holders might be contractually allowed to use their suite during the
game, though many teams double up suite holders into a single suite, Supovitz
said.

There is another unspoken
benefit of winning hosting rights for an NFL owner: It means they have
influence among their peers. Internal league political considerations are never
far from the surface in awarding the game. If a seemingly rock-solid bid falls early
during an owners’ vote, chances are it had something to do with the bidding
owner’s standing among his or her colleagues.